HKB
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Often appears with: fate, destiny, and necessity · the fear of death · justice as a virtue · immortality of the soul · time-shadows · the problem of evil and theodicy · the nature and attributes of God · reason and the intellect · pride, vanity, and humility · postulates of practical reason · poetry and the poets · philosophical anthropology
Usually: argument (3) · confronting death (2) · detachment (2) · wonder (2) · commentary or gloss (1) · dialogue (1) · crisis of belief (1) · censure (1) · humor (1) · skepticism (1)
“These postulates are not theoretical dogmas but, suppositions practically necessary; while then they do [not] extend our speculative knowledge, they give objective reality to the ideas of speculative reason in general (by means of their reference to what is practical), and give it a right to concepts, the possibility even of which it could not otherwise venture to affirm.” Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason · insight
“Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings.” Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufe · insight
Boswell reports further talks with Johnson about immortality and literary fame, Johnson’s remark about hell and good intentions, and his views at Easter on admiration versus judgment and the value of reading over conversational knowledge.
too little done, or that the weather was fair or rainy. He had, till very near his death, a contempt for the notion that the weather affects the human frame. I told him that our friend Goldsmith had said to me, that he had come too late into the world, for that Pope and other poets had taken up the places in the Temple of Fame; so that, as but a few at any period can possess poetical reputation, a man of genius can …
Kant introduces postulates of practical reason—immortality, freedom, and God—claiming they are practically necessary conditions for fulfilling the moral law, extending reason’s ideas without giving speculative knowledge.
{BOOK*2|CHAPTER*2 ^paragraph 60} They all proceed from the principle of morality, which is not a postulate but a law, by which reason determines the will directly, which will, because it is so determined as a pure will, requires these necessary conditions of obedience to its precept. These postulates are not theoretical dogmas but, suppositions practically necessary; while then they do [not] extend our speculative k…
Engels attacks Duehring’s “law of the definite number” as requiring a numerated universe with a beginning in time, then mocks Duehring’s claimed sharpening of Kant’s ideas about time and immortality.
had a beginning: an endless number of causes which have followed one another endlessly is therefore unthinkable, "because innumerability is thus considered as enumerated," therefore a final cause is proved. The second conclusion is "the law of the definite number: the accumulation of identical independent objects of an actual species is only thinkable as being made up of a definite number of these individual objects…
The Professor explains Space and Time as limiting veils, imagines hats that annihilate “where” and “when,” and argues that Past and Future are real to mind, culminating in a claim about the ever-present reality behind death.
weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through. "Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish…
In commentary, Coleridge explains that disproportion between moral worth and worldly fortune leads thoughtful people to infer something essentially different in humans, culminating in an argument for immortality.
COMMENT. A fact may be truly stated, and yet the Cause or Reason assigned for it mistaken; or inadequate; or *pars pro toto*--one only or few of many that might or should have been adduced. The preceding Aphorism is an instance in point. The phenomenon here brought forward by the Bishop, as the ground and occasion of men's belief of a future state--viz. the frequent, not to say ordinary, disproportion between moral …